Affinity Studio

DrDamn

Affinity has for a while been a decent non-sub alternative recommendation for avoiding Adobe. Covering Photoshop and Illustrator like functionality. It was recently bought by Canva and there were fears that a subscription model would follow. A suspension of sales last month and an event announced (recently held) stoked those fires and customers feared the worst.

Turns out to be a very bold move by Canva - https://www.affinity.studio/ - version 3 is out, their three tools (vector based for illustration, pixel based for photos/images and page layout) have been integrated nicely into one interface and to top it all … it’s all free! AI tools are now an option, and that’s where a Canva sub for that comes in, but the core of the software is free. (Canva account is needed).

Brave

Yeah you can also click a button to get rid of the AI stuff from the interface as well which is surprising.

I’ve been using affinity publisher 2 to make my documents and books since I went back to uni. It’s fantastic.

For my final project I’m using (by using I mean breaking ) the stacking features of affinity photo 2 as well. Every bit as good as Adobe’s.

So yeah. Decent suite of free software and the catch can be removed from the interface.